The present invention generally relates to a telephone service remote terminal and more particularly to a cover for a remote terminal which facilitates the mounting and enclosure of an additional circuit module.
Demand for telecommunication service has greatly increased in recent years in response to the use of telephone lines for a variety of digital and analog voice, data and video applications. Such line demand promises only to increase with growing communication needs such as the Internet.
Communication companies have an embedded infrastructure containing only a fixed number of lines connecting to customers. Therefore, in order to avoid installing additional wiring lines to keep up with growing user demand, various multiplexing techniques have been developed which permit the transmission of several channels over each line. The increase of transmission capacity over existing lines has been a major focus of telecommunications developments.
In user environments involving numerous customer lines, such as commercial office buildings or apartment buildings, multiplexing circuitry has been used to convert each subscriber line signal into multiple user signals. For example, one currently popular multiplexing technology is known as digital dual-line (xe2x80x9cDDLxe2x80x9d) (one in/two out). DDL circuitry essentially enables one subscriber line to carry the signals of two telephone customer lines. This advantageously increases the number of circuits for the same number of lines.
The enhanced electronic circuitry to carry out DDL multiplexing may be contained within a standard-configuration circuitry module known as a 400-series card module. In addition to packaging DDL circuitry, card modules are widely used to package circuitry for various other technologies as well, such as HDSL (xe2x80x9chigh density subscriber linexe2x80x9d), ADSL (xe2x80x9casynchronous digital subscriber linexe2x80x9d), RDSU (xe2x80x9crapid download/slow uploadxe2x80x9d), and ISDN (xe2x80x9cintegrated services digital networkxe2x80x9d) circuitry. In all of these applications, the standard card module facilitates a convenient xe2x80x9cplug-inxe2x80x9d installation of the electronics.
While card modules have been used to implement advanced transmission techniques in high-density telecommunication environments, such modules have not been used in applications having relatively few user lines, such as individual houses. Instead, each of these locations is usually provided with at least one wall-mounted box known as a remote terminal (known in the industry as an xe2x80x9cRTxe2x80x9d) which houses a connection interface between a main telephone company line and each individual user line.
In an increasing trend, occupants of houses and apartments are installing additional user lines for computer modems, fax machines, or simply for additional personal or business telephone lines at home. This installation of new user lines conventionally requires the routing of corresponding additional subscriber lines into a remote terminal. Unfortunately, there has been no practical means to date for implementing advanced electronics at an individual customer site to avoid the increasing number of relatively bulky remote terminals.
In order to provide upgraded modern service to customers having standard remote terminals, it is desirable to implement within a remote terminal the type of modern telecommunications electronics provided in card modules. To do so would also reduce the number of subscriber lines routed into a multiple-user remote terminal, because the upgraded circuitry could multiplex a single subscriber line into multiple user lines. Unfortunately, an existing remote terminal unit does not have enough internal space to mount a standard card module, and redesigning a completely new remote terminal base to permit the mounting of a card module adjacent to the existing base-mounted connector components would be impractical because many standard remote terminals are in use, and complete replacement of each unit would involve tremendous resources for their manufacture and reinstallation at each facility. Accordingly, a need exists for a means to adapt conventional remote terminal wiring for use with upgraded circuitry in a manner which maximizes the utilization of a conventional remote terminal structure.
A primary object of the invention is to provide a remote terminal capable of housing advanced electronic circuitry.
Another object of the invention is to adapt existing remote terminal equipment for upgraded operation with modem electronic telecommunication circuitry.
A related object is to provide a means for mounting such circuitry with existing remote terminal structure.
In accordance with the invention, a remote terminal is provided for receiving a standard circuitry module for manipulating a signal. The remote terminal includes an improved cover which can also be substituted for a conventional cover on a standard remote terminal. The improved cover of the invention has an enlarged interior capacity for accommodating the installation of a circuitry module to operate in conjunction with existing components conventionally mounted in the base. Preferably, the improved cover is adapted to connectably receive a standard-sized card module.
An advantage of the invention is that the cover may be used with an existing remote terminal base to upgrade the electronic circuitry without completely replacing the entire existing remote terminal structure.
These and other features and advantages of the invention are described in, and will be apparent from, the detailed description of the preferred embodiments and from the accompanying drawings.